Quote
Originally posted by: mrmarcus12LVA
My point is the Tiger doesn't care whether you're afraid of the wind; it eats you either way. Likewise when a drunk driver barrels through a red light; it really doesn't matter your opinion of drunk drivers. The style of a metaphor isn't as important as whether it fits reality.
In any case, metaphors are significantly inferior to factual knowledge when it comes to solving a problem. What REAL problems (i.e. existing in reality, not problems of thought, interpretation, emotional well-being, etc.) have been solved by application of the Type I/Type II hypothesis? Have fatalities been reduced in any way? Is there any evidence that terrorism alerts have reduced terrorism?
Aren't there serious flaws in the hypothesis? Posit two people who are BOTH making Type I errors (or Type II errors), rather than one a Type I and the other a Type II. Wouldn't the DIFFERENCE in magnitude between the two errors be much more important than the Type?
What you are reminding me of is the kind of person that when you try to tell a joke, keeps interrupting and asking for specifics to elements that make no difference to the humor. Like if one said, “So this priest, rabi, and nun walk into a bar” and the other replies, “what's the name of the bar?... and what time of day is it?...oh, and is it a Catholic priest?...etc...”
It was clearly assumed in this analogy for the difference between Type I & Type II Errors, that if you noticed the Tiger/Predator you were able to avoid it. Yes, in a real life situation that might prove difficult. By definition analogies and metaphors are not real life situations and are only symbolic teaching aids intended to improve understanding. For most it achieves this effect.
Jesus said, “Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the birds of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, some an hundred. He said unto them, He that has ears to hear, let him hear.
— Mark 4:3-9
Far as I know when Jesus said this, people did not start saying stuff like:
1.Farmers don't sow seeds all over the place like that. They sow them in their fields.
2.Couldn't he have put up scarecrows to keep the birds away.
3.You said the seeds that fell on stony ground sprang right up, that can't be right. It takes several days for germination and you didn't say anything about rain. Who's watering these things?
4.Of course you need ears to hear, isn't that kinda obvious.
5.Etc...
So I guess the big question here is what kinda of soil have my seeds been scattered on where you are concerned MrMarcus.
Your post is so full of “issues” I hardly know where to start.
1.You interjected the word, “hypothesis” which in science is an untested theory, into the discussion of things that were neither theory nor untested. Type I & Type II Errors are labels and classifications, like; gas, solid, liquid, and plasma are the classifications for the four states of matter (5 if you include Bose Einstein condensates). My guess is that you interjected the word “hypothesis” to make Type I&II Errors sound more dubious. You did succeed in making your knowledge of what a “hypothesis” actually is dubious indeed.
2.There is no theory or hypothesis of Type I&II Errors as they are labels. There is a theory in evolutionary biology for the causation of them, and here we are using the scientific definition of “theory” (A well tested idea that has been subject to peer review, that has failed to have been disproved) and not the layman definition of “mere idea”.
3.You gave modern day examples of situations where Type I & II errors might occur, which is amazingly off topic, since the field of evolutionary biology only covers things that would have occurred in the stone age or before, and indeed apply mostly to precursors of homo sapiens. Our early ancestors were likely to have walked the occasional predator/wind infested field, they are less likely to have gotten terrorist alerts. And even if they did, it is unlikely that this had much effect on our genetic inheritance, since predators were likely more common than terrorists in the African savanna.
4.You asked, “Aren't there serious flaws in the hypothesis?” Now this is a GOOD question, if we translate “hypothesis” to “theories of causation”. I will answer it below.
Kevin R. Foster and Hanna Kokko are doing most of the work in this field currently, to my knowledge there are no contradictory theories, but there is some discussion on the use of what's called evolutionary modeling by which they achieved their conclusions. William D. Hamilton and Michael Shermer used slightly different modeling techniques and originally questioned Foster & Kokko's methodologies as inferior, but ultimately came to the same conclusions by a slightly different route. The theory is pretty solid.
So the simply answer: No, there are no flaws in the theory of evolutionary causation for Type I & II errors that the process of peer review has yet identified in the amazing work done in the field of evolutionary biology by Kevin R. Foster and Hanna Kokko. Far as I know, it is only contested by you here on the LVA forum. But perhaps this was only because you didn't understand what I was saying, and stressed on the analogy I used which wasn't worded as well as Michael did in his book. I'm hoping this is the case.
Hope that answers your question. I guess we'll see where my seeds have fallen now.
